Villette has become more intense. Lucy Snowe has become without her knowledge an active participant in life and in the human passions she has forbidden herself. Unfortunately she has chosen an object we would not have for her, and realizes for him emotions she has repressed too long in herself.
The following scene has been my second-favorite in the book, the first being Lucy's older friend relating the story of her tragic Christmas-eve.
"I excuse everything," he interrupted; "my mood is so meek, neither rebuff nor, perhaps, insult could ruffle it. You remind me, then, of a young she wild creature, new caught, untamed, viewing with a mixture of fire and fear the first entrance of the breaker-in."
Unwarrantable accost!--rash and rude if addressed to a pupil; to a teacher inadmissible. He thought to provoke a warm reply; I had seen him vex the passionate to explosion before now. In me his malice should find no gratification; I sat silent.
"You look," said he, "like one who would snatch at a draught of sweet poison, and spurn wholesome bitters with disgust.
"Indeed, I never liked bitters; nor do I believe them wholesome. And to whatever is sweet, be it poison or food, you cannot, at least, deny its own delicious quality--sweetness. Better, perhaps, to die quickly a pleasant death, than drag on long a charmless life."
"Yet," said he, "you should take your bitter dose duly and daily, if I had the power to administer it; and, as to the well-beloved poison, I would, perhaps, break the very cup which held it."
I found that so exciting! I was not expecting M. Paul to lay his feelings open that way. The story just gets better. He appears just when I would like him to do so, at her most vulnerable and exposed. After this scene he delivered to her a secret letter from the object of her affection and was explosive about it. He is exceptionally jealous, and Lucy cares for him not at all. I can't wait for Dr. John to walk out of the picture. The interaction between herself and M. Paul is only what it is, a natural extension of their personalities, an increasing connection that becomes more volatile.
The other development I consider is the appearance of the ghost nun, a figment directly from earlier gothic fiction. The nun has appeared in the story twice now, in the midst of Lucy's high and jumbled emotions for Dr. John, and seems to me part relic of the gothic, which is developed earlier when M. Paul locks her in the attic and she falls prey to darkness and covered furnishings, and some creature of the id, some portion of herself manifested in independent form.